Into a cloud-scattered blue sky, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft roars off
the launch pad aboard an Atlas V rocket spewing flames and smoke. Liftoff
was on time at 2 p.m. EST from Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station in Florida. This was the third launch attempt in as many days
after scrubs due to weather concerns. The compact, 1,050-pound piano-sized
probe will get a boost from a kick-stage solid propellant motor for its
journey to Pluto. New Horizons will be the fastest spacecraft ever launched,
reaching lunar orbit distance in just nine hours and passing Jupiter 13
months later. The New Horizons science payload, developed under direction of
Southwest Research Institute, includes imaging infrared and ultraviolet
spectrometers, a multi-color camera, a long-range telescopic camera, two
particle spectrometers, a space-dust detector and a radio science experiment.
The dust counter was designed and built by students at the University of
Colorado, Boulder. The launch at this time allows New Horizons to fly past
Jupiter in early 2007 and use the planet's gravity as a slingshot toward
Pluto. The Jupiter flyby trims the trip to Pluto by as many as five years
and provides opportunities to test the spacecraft's instruments and flyby
capabilities on the Jupiter system. New Horizons could reach the Pluto
system as early as mid-2015, conducting a five-month-long study possible
only from the close-up vantage of a spacecraft.